“Just Small Hiccups” is a visual poem that weaves its story around a young woman’s awakening through absorbing the world around her. Each image unfolds itself into the other creating a stillness that beckons you into her domain as an observing guest. “I Know a Place that isn’t” holds onto a dream that has no end, rotating through the fingers of an innocence that listens before it sees. Grey tones bathe in a mother’s love that blooms by the start of her own ascending.

Yes, it’s true you can’t get lost if you don’t know where you are going. Anni Hanén’s “Just small Hiccups” is such a journey where you hope it never ends. It reminds us all of life’s vulnerabilities and the strength it takes to embrace them. Her small son becomes the quiet narrator who introduces the past within the present. He is “Under No Ones Thumb” “Sometimes Loving, Sometimes Hating,” no promises or valentines on this boy’s path. This book is shrouded in a cool quietness that carries its memories “Through Me in You.” It’s more than just a story between a mother and her son. It’s an awakening between two souls whose roles are
ever changing.

Everything we know is inside us. This book reminds me of a sharing moment I had with my father. It was a warm balmy summer night in downtown LA. The streets where thronged with a lazy flow of people surrounded by a canopy of noise from a city on the move. He asked me “Son, can you hear the crickets chirping?” I in turn looked up to him puzzled by the question of how one could hear anything in this mass of motion. Without much fan fare, he pulled a quarter from his pocket and flipped it into the air, letting it land on the sidewalk we were walking. Immediately, three people looked down to the sound of the coin hitting the pavement. He calmly smiled and said “Well, son, that depends upon what you are listening for.”
— Timothy Persons